Flatwater Homes is a custom home builder that has grown from a standing start into a team of more than 20, building to standards well above the industry norm. For years, the knowledge behind those standards sat with the people who had been there longest. Two years ago the handbook, safety training, building standards and onboarding moved into Waybook, and project manager Jenna Beach set about turning five years of hard-won detail into something the whole team could use. Today more than 100 documents are open to every person on the team, Waybook completion is written into everyone's bonus goals, and Jenna estimates around 70% of the everyday HR and operational questions get answered without anyone being asked.
Flatwater Homes grew quickly, and the knowledge that made the business work grew with it. As the team expanded and people came and went, more of that knowledge sat with the handful of people who had been there longest.
Five years of standards, decisions and hard-won detail sat with the longest-serving members of the team. When a new hire needed something, they had to go and get it from a specific person, and that person was usually mid-build. The information was there, it just moved slowly.
Like most construction businesses, Flatwater had SOPs and a printed handbook. Printed documents date quickly, and once they do, people stop reaching for them. Questions came back to the same one or two people, and every policy change meant an addendum, a round of reprints and a chase to get everyone's copy updated.
Flatwater builds to standards that go beyond the industry norm, so even experienced hires arrive with habits from other companies. Bringing someone up to speed meant one-to-one meetings and a lot of learning on site, which pulled an experienced project manager off their own work every time.
"Sometimes it can feel like you invest so much in somebody and then they're gone. I have the knowledge, or somebody else has the knowledge, and new people need to get it from that person. But if that person's really busy, it can get lost a little bit."
Waybook became the one place the whole team can access, on site or at home, and the only place Flatwater publishes anything. If it matters, it's in Waybook.
The employee handbook lives in Waybook. When it's updated, everyone gets a notice and is required to review the change. Nothing is printed, so nothing goes stale on a shelf, and something like a change of insurance provider becomes a search and replace rather than an addendum sent round the team.
Short safety videos, usually OSHA, go out through Waybook ahead of the team call every Thursday. Everyone is expected to have watched before the call, and one person presents on it. Waybook shows who has completed what, so Thursday starts from what the team has actually seen rather than an assumption.
Jenna ran a budget reconciliation training over Teams, recorded it, and parsed the video into a step-by-step process in Waybook. When Buildertrend later revised part of its system, she only had to rebuild the section on cost coding receipts. As she puts it, "it's not like you have one full document and now it's obsolete - you can just take parts and pieces and update as needed."
"It's nice that we can put information into one place that our whole team can access, and we can make things required and track who's actually doing it."
The rollout was direct: everything goes into Waybook, and Waybook is the only place to get it. Content came in from both directions - standards drafted in Word and pasted straight in, PDFs from building science courses attached alongside them, and processes built natively from recorded trainings. The library has grown past 100 documents, covering the handbook, safety, building standards, onboarding and project management. New hires get 30 days to complete their required reading, and completion is tied to their bonus goals, which gives most people a reason to go in and start looking around in their first week.
"You'll get out of it what you put into it. You have to figure out what information you want to put in there, how you want to organize it, how you want to get that to your team, and how you want to manage your team in the process."
Two years in, the shape of the working day has changed for everyone from the superintendent down.
Jenna estimates that around 70% of the HR and operational questions the team used to bring to leadership are now answered in Waybook. People search it themselves, on their phones on site or at home, rather than waiting for someone to become free.
The handbook, safety training, building standards, onboarding and project management processes are all live and available to every person on the team. Whatever someone needs, from the PTO policy to how Flatwater expects a flashing detail to be done, it's in one place they can reach from a job site or from home.
Waybook completion is written into the team's bonus goals, which turned adoption from a request into something people track for themselves. New hires get 30 days to complete their required reading, and company meetings can reference exactly where each person has got to rather than assuming.
Nothing gets printed any more. No reprints when a policy changes, no addendums to distribute, no chasing people to update their copy. The current version is the only version, and it's the version everyone is looking at.
"If you print a handbook out and put it on a shelf, people don't reference it. With Waybook they do - they'll actually go in and search it. It should be able to replace about 70% of your HR repository, because a lot of the questions you get, HR and operational, are already in there."
The bigger change at Flatwater is who gets to have a say on site. Building a house involves thousands of decisions, and a superintendent balancing a whole site can't be close to every one of them. Giving carpenters and laborers awareness beyond their own trade puts more eyes on the details that matter, and gives anyone who wants to move up a clear route to do it.
"If our laborer is doing a flashing detail and understands the importance of how we do flashing and why, they might see something that's wrong, or they might see something that's done excellent, and they can manage that aspect and help the superintendent build a better home."
The library is more than 100 documents deep and still growing, covering everything from the handbook and safety to project management and the building standards that define what "done properly" means at Flatwater. Jenna has just switched on the first full onboarding learning path, with the newest hires as her first reviewers, and connecting Buildertrend training directly into Waybook is next on her list.
"I've just turned that learning path on, and I'm meeting the two new employees who are using it. What I want from them is to go through it and tell me what works and what doesn't, so we can modify it."
Flatwater Homes put the work in, and it shows. Five years of building knowledge that once sat with a handful of people is now a library more than 100 documents deep, open to everyone from the superintendent to a first-week laborer, on site or at home. The team goes there first, and every standard Jenna publishes makes the next hire faster than the last.
